Chrome OS goes high-octane with Google Pixelbook

Premium performance hardware with secure, speedy software, Google Assistant and a general ease of use. That’s how Matt Vokoun, director of product management, wraps up the Google Pixelbook.

It’s the first convertible laptop from Google itself and it leaps off from the Chromebook Pixel lineage. It actually follows the design language of the Pixel phones with a glass portion in the rear for better radiofrequency reception.

A 12.3-inch display with better than 2K resolution (235 ppi) fronts one face of the experience while a backlit keyboard leads the input experience. Google introduces a stylus with the Wacom-powered Pixelbook Pen — it links up with the newly-integrated Google Assistant in Chrome OS with dedicated interfaces to run search queries, take notes and detect handwriting for conversion into text. There’s a headphone jack and two USB-C ports as part of the I/O.

Chrome OS also gets touted with Android apps, including high-powered ones like AutoCAD, Adobe Lightroom and the ever-popular Snapchat. Software updates are supposed to be quick, painless and automatic. If you happen to lack good Wi-Fi at the moment, Instant Tethering will connect the Pixelbook to the LTE from Pixel phones.

Inside, you’ll find an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor linked with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD space — though there will only be three configurations. The battery should be good for up to 10 hours of use on a full cycle. 15 minutes on the charger in should turn around in 2 hours of use.

The starting price is $999 with the Pixelbook Pen at $99. Pre-orders in the US, Canada and the UK begin today with retailers joining and shipments starting October 31.

Jules Wang is News Editor for Pocketnow and one of the hosts of the Pocketnow Weekly Podcast. He came onto the team in 2014 as an intern editing and producing videos and the podcast while he was studying journalism at Emerson College. He graduated the year after and entered into his current position at Pocketnow, full-time.